50 Cent Reveals How He Has Changed Since Visiting Africa

You wouldn’t know it by some of his tweets, but 50 Cent is a changed man. Fresh off his trip to Africa, the rapper reflected on the trek After announcing that he would use the proceeds from his Street King energy drink to help fight hunger on the continent, earlier this month 50 returned from the motherland with a new perspective. “It enlightened me in different ways,” he told the Associated Press. “To actually see people under the circumstances that I saw was a totally different experience. I don’t think you can prepare yourself for that, no matter how many times you’ve seen the images.”

Over the next five years, the Queens native hopes to shell out a billion meals to starving children. He flew to Kenya and neighboring Somalia with the World Food Program, and was given a bird’s-eye view of the effects of hunger. Although he still has a ways to go in reaching his goal, 50 has provided more than 3.5 million meals to children in need.

Among his most touching experiences in Africa, was visiting children in Kenya’s capital city of Nairobi. What stuck out to the rapper was the children’s similarities to young people in the states. “They have one meal a day, the same meal every day,” he explained. “There’s nothing there — within their eyes and the way that they interacted with each other — that would indicate that they feel deprived in any way. They are the exact kids that you would see here, and that was so confusing. It made you want to pick them up and take them home with you, but you can’t… So you have to do something that makes a difference.”

The trip also inspired that long-awaited, long-delayed forthcoming album that he’s been working on for the last few years. According to 50, he’s not only creating stuff people will “enjoy,” but music that holds “double meanings.”

With a Street King clothing line and other projects in the works, there’s no word yet on when the world will actually get to hear said new music.